


Love, Hate, and Sleepless Nights

by KayleeFrye



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Season/Series 07 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayleeFrye/pseuds/KayleeFrye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"It’s all so goddamn fucking wrong, and it’s all his fucking fault, and every time she sees him, she wants to hurl or punch his fucking lights out, the lying, murderous bastard."</i><br/>Season 6/7 spoilers. Deb tries to reconcile the image she's always had of her brother with the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love, Hate, and Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> The was originally written in response to 7x02 "Sunshine and Frosty Swirl" after it aired, but I feel it summerizes some, but not all, of the conflicting and powerful emotions Deb is dealing with at various points throughout the season.

Deb rarely sleeps now. Between being Homicide's Lieutenant and a 24/7 live-in babysitter for her beloved big brother serial killer, she has two full-time jobs. If she had a choice, she knows which work she’d drop. But she doesn’t: she owes it to herself, to the public, to the police department, and most of all to Dexter, to remain strong and vigilant in her vigil as the one and only centre for “Serial Killers Anonymous”.

 She can’t stop running. If she’s not working or researching, she’s staying up all night on the treadmill, hoping to outrun the intense pressure in her head—fuck, no, she can’t describe it that way. “Pressure” is how he’d described his disgusting fucking "need". But his darkness is inside her now, eating away at her intestines. His words get all twisted up in her head, tangling in her hair until they’re all she can think about, and they slip unbidden from her tongue at every turn. 

Part of her is scared of him. Because, Jesus _fuck_ , now she looks in eyes and sees the emptiness and the gnawing fucking hunger in his expression. She sees the angry cobra that’s coiled in his chest, ready to strike. And how in the fuck did she not notice it sooner? It’s always been there. That’s twice a serial killer’s wormed his way into her heart and deceived her. But this is worse than Rud—than Brian. This is worse than Brian, because this is Dexter, whom she’s spent her entire life loving. Brian she knew a few short weeks, when she was young and naïve, but Dexter? Dexter was— _is_ —her world.

 She knows she shouldn’t be scared—he wouldn’t hurt her. He promises again and again, “Deb, I would never touch you.” She knows it’s true, but her heart won’t believe it; all she sees is his grin and the gleam in his eyes as he plunges a knife into Travis Marshall’s heart again and again and again. She gets up in the middle of the night and runs, runs, runs on the treadmill, but holy shit, nothing can get that fucking image out of her head.

 “Maybe everything is exactly as it should be,” he’d relished, before moving in for the kill. But it isn’t. It’s all so goddamn fucking _wrong_ , and it’s all his fucking fault, and every time she sees him, she wants to hurl or punch his fucking lights out, the lying, murderous _bastard_.

 Always half-ready to arrest him, she keeps her gun and handcuffs with her at all times. But she can’t do it. The cold metal digs into back when she lies on the couch, trying to get at least a little shut eye.

 What little rest she manages is fitful; she spends the night tossing and turning, her body still on edge, half-awake and alert, ready to jump up at the slightest disturbance in the condo, lest the monster in the next room sneak out. In her dreams, Rudy and Dexter are one; the contours of their faces bleed together. They lean over her, one grotesque over-sized shadow of a man-monster with two arms and two legs and two half-formed heads. They speak with one voice, one mind. “Be free, little brother,” they command, and light gleams off something silver above her.

 She wakes with a start, heart pounding, breath racing, and drenched in sweat. She sees a light in the bedroom, but it’s gone by the time she opens the door to check, and her brother is, for all intents and purposes, fast asleep. The sweat lingers, clinging to her body like plastic wrap. It’s all she can feel, tight around her limbs, confining, constricting, and then she’s back on that fucking table, Brian’s voice screaming for her blood. She swears, shivers, shakes her head, and goes for a shower—which is thankfully _not_ big enough for two.

 At work, she douses her face in the makeup of Lieutenant: squared shoulders, stoic features, and a strong voice to lead the pack. She covers the urge to sob with smiles and her sharp, foul tongue. She rebuilds the fortress around her heart with iron casting. 

 In public, Dexter is still Dexter, still her awkward, goofy geek of a big brother, but now she sees all that was always off about his performance, all the reasons he never seemed quite there, never quite able to fully understand all the nuances of human interaction, all the times he seemed like an alien analyzing a new and interesting species. It had been always there, under the surface but just out of reach, but now she sees it, sees him. Everything he does, every word out of his mouth, is twisted and sinister and hallow. It disgusts her. He laughs with Masuka and Angel, and all she can see is fucking plastic gleaming lurid and wrong in the confines of that damned church. Bile bubbles in her throat and she retches. Dexter is the only one to notice. He pauses, mid-conversation, and looks at her with something like sorrow in his eyes. She glares at him across the parking lot crime scene, and spits on the sticky hot pavement. Dexter turns away.

She’s furious—at herself for not seeing it (“fool me twice”), at Dexter for being the same disgusting pile of shit she’s dedicated her life to protecting the world from, for lying to her, for using Harrison to manipulate her into covering up Marshall’s murder. But mostly, she’s pissed at her stupid fucking father for lying to her and turning her brother into a monster behind her back, without ever making an ounce of effort to help him build a dam against the streaming blood that presses against his eyelids, leaving only dear Debra to clean up the mess. Harry, her hero, drove her brother to this. She will never forgive him for it.

 Worst of all, as much as she’d like to see him as nothing but a heinous killer, as much as she’d like to slap handcuffs on his wrists and haul him off (that is her job, isn’t it?), he’s still her brother. She looks at him, and in between bouts of sickness, she stills sees the hurt on a young boy’s face when, in a fit of rage, she told him he wasn’t her brother; the young man who stood off to the side with a genuine smile as she spun their father in a wheelchair, all three of them ecstatic to have Harry back in full health; the man she leaned on through every shit thing she’s been through: seeing cancer suck the life out of their mother; their father’s death; Rudy; Lundy’s murder, being shot, and seeing Christine commit suicide; the Fuentes brothers, the promotion to Lieutenant. Through all of it, he was there, showing her compassion and love.

 So the worst thing of all is that she can’t let him go. She can’t let him be a monster, because she knows he is more than that. She can’t let him rot in jail, because now it’s her turn to support him. She clings to the fading image of her gentle, genial older brother, and those fleeting jovial moments where they laugh about sugar cravings and frosty swirls. She has to believe she can cure him. It’s just an addiction. 

 Worst of all is that she still loves him, and she hates herself for it, because it’s against everything she believes in, and because it’s all so very fucking wrong.  


End file.
